chase the light

Tonight’s the night a bunch of VFX geeks get together and vote who’s best. There are three “Bake Off’s” this week at the Academy. Sound Editors, Visual Effects, and Makeup and Hair Stylists. Many years ago a sound effects editor named Kay Rose came up with the term “Bake Off”. It was coined because of the blue ribbon environment in which the best work of the year is judged. Kinda like pies at a state fair. Her daughter’s name is Victoria Rose Samson, also a sound effects editor, and I happened to take a sound editing class at UCLA that she taught in 1992. She invited us all to the Sound Effects Bake Off, and I’ve been going ever since. What happens is the Visual Effects Supervisor gets up and talks for 3 minutes, they show 15 minutes of effects from the film, and then the whole team gets up and answers questions for 5 minutes. A big red light comes on when your time is up. After it’s all over the members of the Visual Effects Society vote for three that will be up for the Academy Award. I’m going with “The Two Towers”, “Attack of the Clones”, and “Minority Report” as the final three.